Basu: We made our factories safer, then closed them down

Nov. 29, 2012

Bangladeshi firefighters battle a fire at a garment factory in the Savar neighborhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh Nov. 24. / AP

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“Wal-Mart. Save money. Live better,” says the slogan on the website of the world’s largest retailer. But thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers protesting as many as 120 fire deaths in a factory where Wal-Mart clothes were produced think the company has made their lives worse.

Wal-Mart is taking no responsibility for the fire that trapped workers in the plant in which its Faded Glory-labeled clothes were found. It claims it cut ties to the factory after a safety audit last year showed it to be at “high-risk,” and that one of its suppliers subcontracted there without authorization. It says it has now cut ties to that supplier.

But that claim is contradicted by a letter, purportedly from Wal-Mart, posted on the factory owner’s website. Written after last May’s audit, it merely threatens to suspend orders if there are two more high-risk findings within two years. Wal-Mart hasn’t commented on its authenticity.

There was no emergency exit in the factory, and the doors were reportedly locked to prevent workers from leaving or stealing. Some hurled themselves out of windows. If the story has a familiar ring, it’s because in 1911, 146 garment workers in New York died in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, where doors had also been locked to prevent employees from leaving or stealing, and some also jumped out of windows to escape.

Workers at Triangle had been trying to organize a union but the company had refused to recognize it. There had been eight other fires like it in nine years. In Bangladesh, more than 500 people reportedly have been killed in garment factory fires in the last six or seven years. In 2001, Bangladesh’s high court directed the government to set up a committee to oversee the safety of garment workers but that was never implemented.

There is a haunting continuum from the New York fire to the Bangladesh one. Wal-Mart is not alone in turning to other countries to manufacture its clothing lines as U.S. garment workers demanded proper wages and working conditions. Companies turned to poor countries like Bangladesh, where entry level workers earn as little as $37 a month. By subcontracting, companies can claim ignorance of violations of safety and rights.

But workers’ groups in Bangladesh are asking companies contracting with suppliers there to enter binding agreements requiring independent factory inspections. It’s so little to ask. If foreign governments won’t protect their people, U.S. companies doing business there still can and should.

A petition on the change.org web site started by a Bangladeshi who says she was permanently injured as a child laborer in a 2006 factory fire, calls on Wal-Mart and other companies to “Fix Death Trap Factories.” She said hers lacked any safety equipment or fire drills, and that “Six years later, working conditions in Bangladesh have hardly changed.”

Wal-Mart officials could not be reached for this column. In a prepared statement, the company has said it has been “working across the apparel industry to improve fire safety education and training in Bangladesh.” Yet the owner of the factory destroyed in Saturday’s fire said he never knew he was required to have a fire escape.

The Clean Clothes Campaign, an anti-sweatshop advocacy group in Holland, slammed companies’ failure to take action, saying in a statement, “These brands have known for years that many of the factories they choose to work with are death traps.”

More than three million Bangladeshis, mostly women, work in the garment industry. Even if they’re not legally culpable, U.S. companies have an ethical responsibility to those people who subsidize their cheap goods. Wal-Mart buys $1 billion worth of the $20 billion in garments Bangladesh exports every year.

In the movie, “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price,” we learned that the company pays its U.S. employees so little that many are eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health care. Ironically, just a day before the Saturday fire, Wal-Mart workers across America were out protesting their wages and lack of benefits. And this week, five executives of a joint venture between Wal-Mart and an Indian partner were suspended amid a corruption probe. Wal-Mart has acknowledged internal investigations into bribe-paying by its subsidiaries in Mexico, India, China and Brazil.

There’s nothing to prevent companies from going overseas in search of cheap labor, which helps keep prices down for American consumers. But our presence should elevate life abroad, not debase it. When a company like Apple is linked to a Chinese factory where multiple suicides are blamed on poor working conditions, and Wal-Mart is linked to a fatal fire eerily like one 100 years ago in America, it suggests a race to the bottom.

It isn’t just possible to realize savings while ensuring workers are taken care of; it’s a minimal obligation, and American consumers should demand no less.